Graphene Water Treatment

By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed regions, and by 2030 annual global water requirements will exceed current sustainable supplies by 40% with a surge in the global middle class from 1.8 to 4.9 billion people, resulting in an enormous increase in freshwater consumption.

We have exploited the extraordinary properties of graphene to create water filtration products that will provide cheap, clean, energy efficient drinking for billions of people in the years ahead.

Supported with a $1.2 million government R&D grant, Ionic developed a graphene nano-filtration membrane technology in partnership with CleanTeQ during 2017-2018 and has formed a joint venture company (75% CleanTeQ : 25% Ionic), NemaTiQ to deliver the technology to global markets.

Can be used with normal domestic water pressure, unlike existing reverse osmosis technologies that require expensive, inefficient pumps to provide pressure

Fits current module configurations so they can simply be swapped into existing domestic arrangements

Removes all organic materials and pathogens from water without the need to reintroduce important salts after filtration

Is a lower cost product, with superior performance to current reverse osmosis technologies, so we can expect to achieve significant market share in the short-medium term

Will result in products to be certified under US National Sanitary Foundation standards which are the default standards in all countries that NematiQ will target, including Australia, China and India.

NematiQ is led by Peter Voigt, Clean TeQ’s founder and Chief Technology Officer, who said “Through the use of advanced materials, like graphene oxide, we have an opportunity to significantly improve and grow the membrane water filtration market. Graphene’s amazing properties provide a window into a new world of water recovery and reuse.”

Commenting on the decision to progress to the next phase of development via the establishment of the joint venture, Clean TeQ’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sam Riggall, said, “Clean TeQ’s vision is focused on empowering the clean revolution through incremental innovations that provide better performance at lower cost. The application of graphene oxide-based membranes to water treatment is showing strong commercial viability and we look forward to this new joint venture continuing the ground-breaking work in this space.”

Ionic has also developed graphene adsorbent materials and graphene-oxide coated “SuperSand” for water treatment applications that will be the subject of ongoing R&D activities with NematiQ.